Disability Access News

Times of Malta
Thursday, 15th May 2008 - 14:03CET

The National Commission Persons with Disability (NCPD) has filed a judicial protest against a Sliema outlet which, ironically, sells equipment to assist people with disabilities.

The commission said that in terms of the Equal Opportunities (Persons with Disability) Act it had protested over lack of physical access to Firstar Health Care Ltd which sells apparata, including wheelchairs, to disabled persons.

“Over the last months KNPD has been holding a series of discussions with Firstar aimed at ensuring that this retail outlet has, at the very least, an entrance which is compliant with Access for All Guidelines published by KNPD thus ensuring full access to persons with mobility impairments. Unfortunately this aim could not be reached,” the commission said.

It said a judicial protest has also been filed against the Rational Pharmacy, of Birkirkara, which, according to the building permit issued by MEPA, should have been accessible to all.

The commission said it is again asking the management of both Firstar Health Care Ltd.,and Rational Pharmacy to find a solution to their respective problems, thereby ensuring access for persons with mobility impairments, including wheelchair users, who make use of the essential services they provided.

The Ararat Advertiser
23/05/2008 8:45:00 AM

ARARAT - East Grampians Health Service has received $167,372 funding from the Department of Human Services to assist with improvements for accessibility, safety and comfort for older people using the health service.

The funding has been allocated in the 2007/08 financial year and is part of the one off funding of $3 million through the Improving Care for Older People, Council of Australian Governments' (COAG) Longer Stay Older Patients (LSOP) Initiative to support health services to improve the environment for older people.

In December 2007 East Grampians Health Service conducted an environmental audit and submitted 17 priority improvements and has been successful in getting funding approval for fourteen projects across the health service at both Ararat and Willaura.

Projects will get underway immediately and first up is to improve the access and safety at the main front entrance of the Ararat hospital. This will include the upgrade of pathways and entry, access for wheelchairs, widening of the front doors and increasing the time to get through the automatic doors.

These works will mean the temporary closure of the main entrance from Sunday May 25 through to Thursday May 29.

The general public will need to access a number of areas of the main hospital vicinity via the rear entrance of radiology and the pathology department.

Limited access will be available for patient admissions and those visiting patients, in addition to people with a disability, via the Cathcart Day Room which is adjacent to the main car parking area of the inpatient unit west wing.

Prominent signage will be in place to assist visitors to all areas affected.

Volunteers will also be available to guide patients and visitors.

Other projects coming up will include replacing signage across the health service, installation of handrails in both pathology and radiology passageways and improvement of access to radiology, installation of sound absorption material in some rooms in inpatient rooms, repair work on flooring at Garden View Court Hostel, purchase of chairs with arms for waiting rooms and the installation of perimeter fencing at Willaura.

All works are expected to be completed within six months and it is anticipated where possible works will be carried out in conjunction with local suppliers and tradespeople.

Commenting on the works, EGHS CEO John Davies apologised for the inconvenience caused during the works and acknowledged the significant on-going financial assistance of Government in improving access and services at East Grampians Health Service.

Ryan Burns/The Times-Standard
Article Launched: 05/18/2008 01:32:44 AM PDT

The closure of Eureka's Arctic Circle last month -- prompted in part by an Americans with Disabilities Act noncompliance lawsuit filed by Eureka attorney Jason K. Singleton -- has sparked community outrage over what some see as a spate of frivolous lawsuits, while others say it's the disabled who remain the victims.

Since 1997, Singleton has filed ADA suits against many local businesses, including Village Pantry, the Minor Theatre Corp., Cher-Ae Heights Casino and Cafe Waterfront. His latest string of suits -- against Barnes Arcata Family Drug, McKinleyville's Central Station bar, Six Rivers Brewery and others -- has caused a panic among small business owners who worry that they'll be next.

”They're ringing the phones off the hook,” said Greater Eureka Chamber of Commerce Executive Director J Warren Hockaday.

Most of the callers have the same question: How can I keep from getting sued?

Eureka insurance agent P.J. “Paul” Nicholson spent more than three weeks studying ADA regulations and renovating his business after a lawyer -- not Singleton -- filed suits against 200 State Farm offices up and down California's I-5 corridor.

Nicholson hired Disability Access Consultants, Inc. to inspect his property. For $1,000, the company provided Nicholson with a report of possible ADA violations, including his front door, which was an eighth of an inch too short. Nicholson merely had to replace the weather stripping to be in

”That's bull****,” Singleton said from his office on Thursday. “Go pull any of the files and show me a business that didn't have very substantive barriers to access.”

Singleton said his office always sends a letter requesting ADA compliance before filing a lawsuit and only proceeds if there is no response. Minor infractions are never the main incentive, he said.

”That's not to say that after we got into a lawsuit, yes, you can find individual items like that,” Singleton said. But he feels businesses have no excuse for not being compliant. The ADA law, after all, has been on the books since 1990.

”At what point are people with disabilities supposed to do something?” Singleton asked. “Are they supposed to get in front of the building and beg for access?”

When asked if he worries about the impact his lawsuits have on small businesses like Arctic Circle, he responded, “You're asking, do I have some moral or ethical issue with representing people who are disabled and can't get (proper) access? No, I do not.”

Chris Jones, executive director of Tri-County Independent Living, while not supporting Singleton's methods, agrees that business owners have had plenty of time to make their premises accessible. She feels that the attention being paid to these so-called “drive-by lawsuits” takes the focus away from the real issue -- disabled people who still face discrimination.

”It's disappointing that this is where ADA has come to,” Jones said. “The authors (of the bill) worked for decades. It was such hard work. When it passed, it was like emancipation for people with disabilities.”

She said that total compliance is not required under the law. Rather, businesses must make “reasonable accommodations” within their means, but nothing that would cause an “unreasonable hardship.”

”There are lots of inexpensive things you can do,” she said. “Make an attempt.”

But Dave Corkill, owner of the Cinema West theater chain, which includes the Fortuna Theatre, said that to him, the work lawyers like Singleton do is not really about making a good-faith effort. Singleton sued the Fortuna Theatre for compliance issues in 2001.

”The way (Singleton and his staff) do business is they come in with a camera and take pictures,” Corkill said. “They don't talk to you first because they can't make money if they talk. That's the game they play.”

Since it's usually cheaper to settle than go to court, most business owners don't fight the lawsuits.

”For me, it wasn't a financial decision,” Corkill said. “Jason Singleton is not a pleasant person. I'm sure he regrets ever suing us.”

Cinema West fought the case in federal court and won. Singleton appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the ruling.

”We were clearly able to prove that many of his claims were just plain lies,” Corkill said.

By going to court, Corkill said he ended up paying more money than if he'd simply settled. “But it really was a matter of principle,” he said. “We didn't have violations; he said we did.”

Not everyone can afford to take that kind of stand, he said.

”I am financially capable of dealing with (the suit) in the manner we did,” Corkill said. “Most people aren't. Business owners ... struggle to make just enough money to pay the bills. They don't budget in the $25,000 settlement fee Jason Singleton wants.”

But Singleton's intention is not to put companies out of business, according to Corkill.

”He targets businesses that can afford to pay him,” Corkill said. “That's how this game is played.”

Singleton has been accused of seeking out disabled people, encouraging them to sue and then using them as plaintiffs again and again.

”His big plan is to sue (a business) and then haul them to federal court,” said Catherine Corfee, an attorney who has faced off against Singleton in court. “He has multiple lawsuits that he's filed on behalf of serial litigants. It's not about access to public accommodations; it's about access to their pocketbooks.”

Singleton denies those accusations.

”I don't seek out any cases. I just take what clients bring me,” he said.

Court records show some of his clients do sue multiple times.

Patrick McMahon, a Rio Dell resident who has cerebral palsy, was one of the plaintiffs in the Fortuna Theatre case. Singleton also represented him in cases against Angelo's Pizza, the City of Fortuna and Fortuna HealthSport.

A relative of McMahon's, who did not want to be identified for fear of legal retaliation, alleges Singleton used McMahon “to the hilt.”

”He's in no way able to even work out (at a gym),” the relative said.

McMahon himself said the local cases were his idea and that he was indeed discriminated against in each case. But after those cases settled, he said Singleton approached him about another case in Nevada.

”He had an associate over there, and they wanted to go to a place,” McMahon said. “So I went.”

McMahon's relative claims a suit was subsequently filed against a casino that McMahon had never been in until then.

Singleton said that never occurred.

”My office has certainly never filed a lawsuit in Nevada,” he said. “I'm not even licensed in Nevada.”

The combative atmosphere that has developed is exactly what Hockaday and the Chamber of Commerce tried to avoid several years ago by hosting informational workshops with members of the business and disabled communities.

”People are starting to take sides again,” Hockaday said.

Jones feels the battle lines are often drawn in the wrong place.

”People's outrage transfers from (Singleton) to the disabled community,” she said.

Many on both sides of the issue are hoping that a bill currently working its way through the state Senate will clear up confusion about ADA compliance. Senate Bill 1608 is described by its authors as, “a multi-faceted strategy to effectively increase compliance (with the ADA).”

If established as law, the bill would create the California Commission on Disability Access and allow businesses who hire certified inspectors to be deemed “qualified defendants.” As such, these businesses could request a limited stay and an early settlement conference to possibly resolve the litigation at an early stage.

”It could be a win-win,” Jones said, but she's not optimistic about the bill's chances. “They want to create a commission on disability access, and budget cuts are coming.”

Trial lawyers are actively fighting the bill.

When asked his opinion of SB 1608, Singleton said he already follows the guidelines put forth in the bill.

”It wouldn't affect me at all,” he said.

Country's 'most vulnerable' need help
May 21, 2008 04:30 AM
Rosie DiManno
COLUMNIST

KABUL–Their broken bodies break the heart.

A legless man trundled down the middle of the street in a wheelbarrow. A little boy with deformed and useless limbs scuttling across a bridge like a crab, wrapping his thin arms around a passerby's ankle, unwilling to let go, begging for change. A keening woman with empty eye sockets, her palms upturned, squatting at the edge of traffic.

Afghanistan is a country of the lame and the maimed.

It is doubtful whether any place on Earth has a larger proportion of disabled and often discarded citizens, eking out an existence on the margins of charity.

Three decades of war, millions of mines and unexploded ordinance (UXO) for children to trip over, suicide bombers, birth defects due to clannish intermarriage, congenital disabilities never corrected for lack of health care, ordinary ailments left untreated and the vast afflicted detritus accrued from preventable diseases such as polio, to say nothing of inestimable psychological trauma: Afghanistan is a wasteland of the mutilated and crippled.

"Yes, go ahead and take my picture," agrees Ahmad Hamid, one-legged and blind, pleading for alms on a blanket spread near the bazaar, surrounded by several of his young children. "Show them to the president. Show him how his people, his brave mujahideen, have to beg in the streets for food."

Nearly all amputees – arm missing here, leg missing there – claim to have been mujahideen, Afghanistan's patriots, although often their age belies this. Doesn't mean, though, that they aren't victims of war and its radiating miseries, or even a current insurgency that claims more victims among the citizenry than those in uniform.

"It was a fragment of a bomb," explains Zalmai, 23, lifting the stump of an arm. "It happened near Bagram five years ago, a Taliban explosion. Doctors could do nothing but cut off what was left.''

Hayatolla, 30, says he was a teenage labourer in the north when he stepped on a land mine and lost his leg. "It totally changed my life. I can't work any more. I came to Kabul because I didn't want to be a burden on my family. But 15 years I've been begging on these streets. I live by the kindness of people who feel sorry for me.''

Disabled Afghans receive 400 Afghanis a month in benefits from the government – about $8 Canadian. But they have to go to an office to get the money and a great many are totally immobile, isolated.

A 2005 disability survey conducted by Handicap International found that upwards of 2.7 per cent of the population – or one out of every five households – suffers from a "severe'' disability and a further 4.8 per cent from a "minor" disability. The survey put the tally of severely disabled Afghans at up to 867,000.

War-related disabilities, primarily loss of limbs, account for an overwhelming proportion of non-birth-defect cases. Land mines, bullets, grenades and booby traps are among the causes. Out of a population of 25 million, 123,000 Afghans have been directly incapacitated by war and its consequences.

Many can't dress themselves, can't wash themselves, can't go to the toilet unaided, can't do simple household chores, can't work and can't budge without assistance.

There are so many urgent problems facing Afghanistan. Addressing the needs of the disabled has not been a priority for the government.

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan now has responsibility for a joint UN-NGO project started in 1995 to help integrated the handicapped into the community. Rehabilitation of Afghans with Disabilities functions in 13 provinces with 500 staff and 600 volunteers.

"We go where nobody else will go," RAD program co-ordinator Zemarai Saqeb told the Star.

"In Afghanistan, all people have economic problems compared to five years ago. But for the most vulnerable people, it has been getting worse. There are simply insufficient services and funds for people with disabilities."

The RAD program has five components: community mobilization, awareness and advocacy; employment support; special/inclusive education; physiotherapy; and orthopedic workshops.

It's tough to identify the needs of a non-visible disabled community, especially in rural areas, Saqeb said.

Disabled people have received training in such trades as carpentry, tailoring and computer technology; many become breadwinners for themselves and their families.

RAD has directly helped 170,000 Afghans, including diagnosis of physical problems, getting medical help and ensuring rehabilitation and physiotherapy.

More orthopedic technicians are being trained. The disabled themselves staff four workshops that manufacture prosthetic devices – 7,000 a year distributed at no cost – and crutches.

"A lot of those beggars on the street have artificial limbs," Saqeb points out, "but they don't use them when they're asking for money."

It's not a con. It's just that standing on your own two feet in Afghanistan is sometimes better done by teetering on one.

www.chinaview.cn 2008-05-22 16:45:59

BEIJING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- All the people left disabled by the massive May 12 quake in southwest China would get free artificial limbs and wheelchairs if needed, the China Disabled Persons' Federation announced on Thursday.

The project was launched in cooperation with the Hong Kong-based Li Ka Shing Foundation, the federation said.

Li Ka Shing, a Hong Kong tycoon, said he hoped the move would help those who lost their arms and legs in the quake could receive rehabilitation service as soon as possible and rebuild a new life.

Hundreds of technicians from 180 artificial limbs centers all over China would do the job for the disabled quake survivors.

Meanwhile, the federation said it would help build in quake-hit Sichuan a modern rehabilitation center for the disabled and offer long-term professional rehabilitation services for them.

So far, the federation has sent to the quake zone a 50-member national rehabilitation medical team to help the disabled.

The latest figures showed that 274,683 people were injured in the 8.0-magnitude quake that hit southwestern Sichuan Province on May 12. Some have suffered amputations and spinal injuries.

A 1988 survey said more than 3,000 survivors of a strong earthquake in Tangshan in north China's Hebei Province in 1976 were disabled with amputations, according to Director of the China Rehabilitation Research Center Li Jianjun.

By KOMO Staff
SEATTLE -- Two former employees of the Huling Bros. car dealership were sentenced Friday for their part in bilking a mentally handicapped man out of an expensive pickup truck and stealing thousands in cash.

Ted Coxwell was sentenced to 12 months for theft and money laundering, but he already served the time while waiting in jail for his trail.

His former co-worker, Adrian Dillard, was sentenced to 12 months of work release.

Prosecutors said Dillard was the ringleader in a a case that involved 11 people at the dealership.

Investigators said the victim went to the now shuttered West Seattle dealership in July 2006, wearing soiled clothing and carrying a sack full of $30,000 in cash and told the salesman that he had more than $70,000 still in his house.

Several salesmen sold Richard Grey a high-priced truck, and Dillard and Coxwell broke into his home to steal the cash.

"The evidence shows (Dillard) was the first one, along with Ted Coxwell, to go into Mr. Grey's apartment," Prosecutor Tim Leary said during the sentencing hearing on Friday.

Leary recounted testimony from the trial indicating that Dillard made $25,000 a month at the dealership and said, "there was absolutely no reason that he had to go and steal from Mr. Grey other than to take advantage of an incredibly vulnerable person who was off his medication."

After the theft the victim was hospitalized for psychiatric care, and court documents indicate that while he was at the hospital, he called the dealership to express his concern that his new truck would be auctioned by a towing company that had impounded the vehicle.

He spoke with Paul Rimbey, who convinced Grey to sign over the truck to him and had him sign a bill of sale. Rimbey bought the $30,000 truck back for just $1,200, then kept it and drove it as his own.

Rimbey, who was sentenced in January to 9 months in prison, allegedly even went so far as to have a notary public at the dealership help fraudulently notarize the needed sales documents.

Prosecutors said five other employees at the dealership could face charges related to the theft.

The case against the salesmen became public shortly after the dealership was sold to Gee Automotive. Gee alleges that the notoriety caused sales at the business to plummet, and the dealership was closed last year.

Gee and former owner Steve Huling have both filed lawsuits against each other in the matter.

A deaf woman has won a case against a potential employer after complaining that she was discriminated against prior to the interview stage. Pauline Alexander applied for temping work within Sales Link Services, a recruitment agency in London. She had formerly been the director of a property company, and was well qualified for the role for which she was applying.

When she contacted Sales Link Services about the position, she was told that her hearing impairment would be a barrier to doing the job. Although she was asked to send in a CV, the company contacted her shortly afterwards to tell her that she would not be invited to interview because of her hearing loss. It was only when Ms Alexander pointed out that this was discriminatory that the company backed down and offered her an interview.

When Ms Alexander took the case to an employment tribunal, it ruled that she had been unfairly discriminated against under the Disability Discrimination Act. Sales Link Services was ordered to pay £5,000 in compensation, as well as legal fees. However, she found that this part of the process was not free from obstacles, as she explained: ‘I'd also like to see an overhaul of the tribunal system to make it more “disability friendly”, including deaf and disability awareness training for all tribunal staff, especially those on tribunal panels.’